Action Philosophers!Let's get ready to PHILOSOPHIIIIIIIIIZE!!!
I am so smart! I am so smart! S-M-R-T! Here at ST, we love smart comics. We love irreverent comics. We love wickedly funny comics. And we love to learn from our comics as well. This month, we cover all the bases with the intelligent and hilarious Action Philosophers! Alice Doyle, Contributing Writer Philosophy is one of those unfortunate subjects you first encounter when you are a teenager; you think you already know everything there is to know. Still, you are made to sit through hours of tedium wondering why you should pay attention to an old person explaining the ramblings of a bunch of old men who obviously had way too much time and (occasionally) drugs at their disposal. And thanks to this inauspicious start when you realize you may not actually know it all, philosophy is still clouded by memories of it as the most emo of subjects, so it rarely is a person’s first choice of literature. The truth is, philosophy is always worth a read. It makes you look at the world in a different way, it gives you an insight into another person’s thought process, it makes you think and wonder, and it gives your brain a workout no other literature can give you. It’s such a shame most of it is so much hard work to get into. Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey realized something like this is going on in brains around the planet and created a project to help philosophically challenged readers — such as myself — find an easy, painless way to learn about philosophers and their thoughts. This project is called Action Philosophers!. Initially, the thought of a couple of creators turning philosophers into action comic book material conjured images of the more "challenging" pupils my high school philosophy teacher may have had. However, Action Philosophers! comes across as an entertaining way to make a dry subject more appealing. The books give you the basic history and thoughts of a particular philosopher so you have the knowledge you need to either want to read more, or happily declare you understand the why of Buddhists' insistence on eliminating the self (for example). The first feeling I had about this comic is it had something of an Asterix & Obelix feeling to it, in that it makes a dry subject more appealing. But then I realized what it really reminded me of was “Once Upon a Time...Man”, an animated television series by French producer Procidis that was a huge hit when I was a child. I think AP does for Philosophy what Procidis did with history. In each episode of the series, you find out the background on what was the prevailing thought before, during, and after a certain philosophical movement or a philosopher's life and, along with the history, you discover the creation and development of our hero’s way of thought. Van Lente and Dunlavey are also not afraid to give the bad news side of the history or the philosophy either, e.g. Jefferson’s dodgy relationship with slavery and the Terror years of the French Revolution. It’s reassuring to see you are reading the work of someone who is interested in the subject rather than a panegyric. Ok, there are points where a dictionary or an encyclopaedia will be useful because in explaining one thing they introduce another you may be clueless about. Sentences such as, “When Thomas (Aquinas) began teaching in Paris himself in 1252 he was opposed, at first, by Platonists like St. Bonaventura who felt Aristotle’s rejection of the theory of forms denied that God possessed all the ideas of the world," had me running to wikipedia and the OED. But this is the reason to read a comic like Action Philosophers!, to leave the book (or the net) knowing more than you did at the start. Personally, I love it when something I read leaves me with the feeling I now know more than before. But mostly it´s neat to be able to read and understand the basics of philosophy, feel all that much more clever and still get to giggle at the funnies or the bits where you find out the less well know defects of famous men. The comics are done in a way that they change ever so slightly in each issue so the comic serves the material, not the other way around. With each philosopher or school of thought, the art and dialogue change to help make it more clear what on earth they were talking about. Action Philosophers! is a good comic, it's informative, entertaining and the sort of thing you'd like to show to those people who huff and puff about the dumbing down of society when they see an adult reading a comic. It is not groundbreaking material to be fair, but it is material that is always interesting and, be it to while away some time, be it to remember what that bearded bloke was going on about when you were in high school, it's a better way to spend your money than most. Katherine Keller, Editrix-In-Chief Years ago, Bill Messner-Loebs and Sam Kieth took an insightful and hysterically funny look at ancient Greek philosophy, mythology, and life in general with Epicurus The Sage. Not only did the comic "entertain and delight", but it also informed readers because it did contain a very good overview of Epicurian philosophy and what was going on in Greece at that time. Action Philosophers! carries on that grand tradition. Yeah, it's actually got good information on the philosophers and their philosophies and the zeitgeists that produced them, but holy-cow is it both witty and funny. I was most recently reminded of this at the most recent WonderCon, where I saw a laugh out loud funny poster which explains "The Hero's Journey" in classic Action Philosophers! style. Not only were all the Campbellian steps there, but each step was illustrated with a scene that referenced the moment in a variety of heroic epics, from The Iliad to Arthurian epic, to Star Wars. What a great way to illustrate how this concept is still active. In the end, that's what Action Philosophers does best — it shows how all of that philosophy is not dry stuff mouldering away in a book; it shows how it applies to real life, how these ideas shape the world we live in. And, if it doesn't make you smile (and even laugh) you've been dead a long time.
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